Final Project: Bobwhite-Manatee Transmission Line

 The purpose of this project was to use the various skills learned throughout the semester to analyze the impact of the Bobwhite-Manatee preferred transmission line corridor on the community, environment, and expense. Below are my results, as well as a link to my StoryMap on the project.

                 Site overview: this is to provide context. Sarasota County is shown in purple, and Manatee is in green above it. The corridor is in red, surrounded by the site study area indicated by the dotted line. 

Objective: Define and quantify environmentally sensitive lands imposed on by the transmission line corridor. 

Analysis:

Conservation Areas

• Add all shapefiles to map, clip conservation layer to the corridor layer
• Add Field and Calculate Geometry
• Repeat steps for entire study area

Wetlands & Uplands

• Select by attribute where NWICODE is not equal to 'U' (Selection for Wetlands)
• Make Layer from Selection, Repeat for Uplands where NWICODE is equal to 'U'
• Repeat Conservation Area steps to get uplands and wetlands with study area

If you look closely at the previous map, you’ll see three separate conservation areas that intersect the proposed corridor. These are the Lake Manatee Lower Watershed, Lake Manatee State Park, and the Heritage Ranch Conservation Easement. The study area had about 127313.85 acres of non-conservation land within its borders (97.5%), with 10,393.82 acres of Conservation land (2.5%). The corridor itself had 6,402.43 acres of non-conservation land (92.5%) with 163.43 acres of conservation land (7.5%). The wetland makeup of the study area was 1,9052.3 (13.8%) acres, with 11,8655.38 (86.2%) acres of upland. Within the corridor was 914.01 (13.9%) of wetland and 5651.85 of upland area (86.2%). 

Objective: Quantify schools within proximity of the transmission line. 

Analysis:

• Download school data from Florida Department of Education website
• Once in Excel format, download as CSV
• Geocode schools from both Sarasota and Manatee Counties
• Clip school layers to study area
• Select by location for all schools that intersect corridor buffer 

The map above shows the schools from both counties in the study area. According to the dataset, there were no schools within the zone of the corridor; therefore, the corridor would have a limited impact on education facilities.

Objective: Quantify homes and parcels within proximity of the transmission line

Analysis:

Create 400 ft buffer zone from corridor

Homes:

• Digitize houses by using aerial imagery
• Add fields within the corridor and within buffer
• Create point feature
• Digitize homes in these areas

Parcel Counts:

• Select by location all parcels that intersect the corridor buffer
• Make layer-by-selection
• Count selection from the attribute table
• Repeat for both counties

The teal dots on the previous map represent homes within the zone of the corridor. I counted 49 homes within the corridor itself and 90 in total, including homes in the buffer zone. One limitation of this method is that the aerial imagery from Labins was very blurry when zooming in to find potential homes. Google Earth might have been better imagery, or if we could gather address data from both counties, we could create a georeferenced similar to the county schools map method in Module 5.

For parcel totals, there were 255 total parcels that would be impacted by the transmission line. 30 were within the corridor zone in Sarasota, with 53 total parcels, including the buffer zone. In Manatee, the totals were made up of 132 parcels within the corridor zone and 202, including the buffer zone. These parcels are shown on the previous map.

Objective: Quantity length and calculate the potential cost of the transmission line

Analysis:

• Use polygon to centerline geoprocessing tool
• Add field to table titled 'miles'
• Use calculate geometry tool to calculate the mile of the proposed transmission line
• Use cost estimate versus total miles to produce a total cost estimate for the project.

The total mileage for the transmission line was 24.8 miles. The above map shows this line in yellow. 

The estimated cost of a single-circuit tubular steel pole transmission line with 230kV is $1.1 million per mile. Therefore, the estimated cost for the project is $27,280,000.